What We Studied

Things did not go as planned this week. I had originally planned to do the grocery shopping on Wednesday, which takes me away from active teaching for an entire morning. Usually I give Arthur an independent packet or a project to work on. Wednesday morning, I woke up and immediately realized that none of that would be happening that day. I was hit with a vertigo-inducing migraine. I didn’t leave my bed all day and it was terrible. An entire day where no schooling was done. Then I had to push grocery shopping onto Thursday. Being sick really threw off my entire plan for the week. Thank goodness we had a normal Monday and Tuesday and we’re doing a modified schedule for Spring Break for the next two weeks.

Literature and Poetry

We ended up finishing Sideways Stories from Wayside School this week. Arthur liked some of the stories, but didn’t seem to appreciate the absurdist humor. Oh well! we still did a lot of reading both from our read aloud and independently.

• Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar

• The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll (literature study)

Math

Singapore Math 2A has been completed! Woot! We have 2B, but will be taking a bit of a break for Spring Break and get back into it in late March.

Social Studies

This week we covered two U.S. History lessons, one on Ben Franklin and one on The French and Indian War. We are slowly working our way to the Revolutionary War.

• Making Thirteen Colonies by Joy Hakim (decent textbook style book)

• Ben of All Trades by Michael J. Rosen

• Ben Franklin Thinks Big by Sheila Keenan

Science

See Unit Theme

Art

Nothing formal, but lots of random inventions and crafts.

Music

We finished our Jazz unit. We’ve had a great time tracing jazz through the ages up to modern interpretations. Arthur still loves ragtime, swing, and big band styles the best. He hasn’t really been a fan of any of our selections post 1950s. At least he got a lot of exposure to different artists.

• Jazz by Walter Dean Myers (poems)

• Nina by Alice Briere-Haquet

• The 5 O’Clock Band by Troy Andrews

• Ruby Sings the Blues by Niki Daly

Unit Theme

We finished learning about our Solar System this week, covering the Outer Planets. We also watched a few more episodes of The Planets from NOVA. We covered Mars and Jupiter. I learned so much from the Jupiter episode. We will definitely be continuing our study of space into Spring Break.

• Planet Jupiter by Ann O. Squire

• DK Space

• Space Visual Catalog by Sean Callery and Miranda Smith

• Saturn by Elaine Landau

• Planet Uranus by Christine Taylor-Butler

• Neptune by Elaine Landau

• All My Friends are Planets by Alisha Vimawala

• Pluto: From Planet to Dwarf by Elaine Landau

• Beyond Pluto by Elaine Landau

• Astronaut Handbook by Meghan McCarthy

• Hedgie Blasts Off by Jan Brett

• Astro Girl by Ken Wilson-Max

• Under the Milky Way by Frank Lessac

• The Girl Who Named Pluto: The Story of Venetia Burney by Alice B. McGinty

• A Place for Pluto by Stef Wade

• Astronaut Annie by Suzanne Slade

• The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot by Margaret McNamara

• Garcia & Colette Go Exploring by Hannah Barnaby

Misc. - Random picture books read

• Night Tree by Eve Bunting

• The Shy Little Kitten by Kristen Depken

• Tiny T. Rex and the Perfect Valentine by Jonathan Stutzman

• Are You a Bee? by Judy Allen and Tudor Humphries

• Good Night Little Bot by Karen Kaufman Orloff

• Leaf by Sandra Dieckmann

• Lego Jurassic World: Owen to the Rescue

• Mickey and the Roadster Racers: Mickey’s Perfecto Day

• Curious George: Lemonade Stand

• In the City by Chris Raschka

• Look Out! It’s a Dragon! by Jonny Lambert

Highs

• Friday was my birthday and it was decent weather. We took the opportunity to go to the library and the spend some time at the park.

Lows

• That migraine really threw me off.

Next Week

For the next two weeks, we will be having our version of Spring Break. We aren’t completely stopping school, but scaling back and focusing more on crafts and games. We are also planning on doing a few field trips (one to Lincoln!) and spending a part of almost every day at a park.

Next up on the TBR pile: